Milsons Park
The Birth of Obsession
After missing the Expo I was looking forward to, with good reason, I wasn't about to let another slip through my digits without a fight.
This was the email I was waiting for:
This Saturday's Expo will meet 8:00pm at Milsons Point Train Station.
Don't forget; torches, and clothes that can get dirty as.
I had previously heard of this place, and again read and basically jerked off to, Siologens article ( http://siologen.livejournal.com/calendar) and photo's along with D'sankt's (http://www.sleepycity.net/) masterpieces.
I used to play around quite a bit with photography when I was younger but with a career that was in desperate need of fast-tracking I had procured the unusual talent of seeing only what could enhance my career ie if it wasn't about music, I didn't give a fuck. At all. Ive since either grown up a bit or I've become seriously jaded. Prolly both.
Being inspired by all the goodness I was seeing online I decided that both myself and my beautiful girlfriend Jess, who actually STUDIED photography would purchase a new digi camera, just something cheap that can be taken in putrid places like drains and bird shit infested derelict warehouses and didn't require the correct condition with the star of Jupiter's Belt and the moons of Saturn aligning as our SLR does. A diva camera indeed.
We got a good deal on a Canon S1 last season stock for half price ..... $400. Sweet.
Although only 3.2 mp it's fully manual mode (TV) is optimal for skanky places with little to no light available ie TIME EXPOSURE. Which btw an SLR will do no sweat, but be buggered if I'm gunna take rolls and rolls of pics to have zero turn out right. The LCD screen playback mode on a digi is priceless. I can check my fstop, exposure, iso in the blink of an eye, adjust it and see if my adjustment are correct. If they are then I can pretty much use that as a benchmark for the rest of the drain, within reason. Using only minor adjustments to a template means I can spend more time looking with my eyes, not THROUGH the viewfinder.
Anyways, the drain ....
Milsons Park was built sometime pre Depression era. I've heard a mix of reports dating the construction pre 1900 although I can't get Sydney Water to confirm it without scrolling through the archives at the research room SW have.
I lurve the Freedom of Info Act, even if they don't make it easy to gett said info, they must atleast make it available, somewhere somehow. One thing is definite, it replaced an old stream that is still evident for those watchin the floor.
The water coursing over the natural rockbed in places forming deep channels, the effect of eons of continuos flow.
You're prolly about to see something that looked that way when it was built, may 100's of years earlier.
Dropping into the concrete manhole situated in a quiet leafy park surrounded by orange unit blocks a small RCP awaits to greet every explorer. A quick double over and trudge mission down the RCP brings you to something I hadn't seen in other drains I've explored ... haha shouldn't that read: smoked bongs in?? Whatever. I was looking at a 12ft slide on a steep gradient that I'd hate to be in a rush to get up or down. By slide I mean a steep, smooth section of declining tunnel with churn blocks (lumps of cement) at the bottom to slow the flow of water that would have been escalated by the slide.
Not knowing where to go, but being a little too enthusiastic to show my mate Omen that doing fucked up things is good for the soul, I went down the slide and into the adjoining 4ft RCP that snakes it way down the hill like the Waterworks in Manly.
Unfortunately most ppl followed me. It wasn't until we heard the booming echo of " Actually guys, it's this way" that we realised that we being Newbies, and prolly very good examples of a genuine newby can't be made more apparent.
We trekked back up to the slide and this time went back up the slide to see a room at the top on the other side of a wall. This room lead to a small 3ft duck waddle style walk through a fucking wake up call. This was the shit.
I'm into seeing relics and this place has them in spades. First section is a sandstone loaf shape only small i height but large in distance, well when yr duck walking 20 feet seems too long. I guess it goes for around 100m before opening out again.
The shape changes and age are what makes this drain an experience that shouldn't be missed, if your into this sorta thing anyways.
The duration is a mixture of brick built, sandstone blocks, rough cut rock, and the occasional RCP (round concrete pipe) that stretches under the express way and snakes up the hill to central North Sydney.
Height ranges from 3ft to 7ft and is primarily an easy explore.
I went back a few weeks later and did the reverse traverse. Starting in Nth Syd this time and entering a gutter-box infront of yuppie-lunch-eating onlookers, I went down as far as the small Loaf section and came back up to Nth Syd passing the gutter box and this time continuing thru the smaller 4ft brick/concrete section I hadn't explored before.
The graff reads: CRAP FOR NEXT 200m THEN GETS GOOD AGAIN. After a good 5mins of hunchback madness the pain in my back was too much to bare.
Returning to the GBG in Little Spring St, I made the messy exit, due in part to the lack of step irons and again greeted the curious onlookers.
Milsons Point Drain is one of if not my fave drain in Sydney.
Fl@sh
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flashobscura/
After missing the Expo I was looking forward to, with good reason, I wasn't about to let another slip through my digits without a fight.
This was the email I was waiting for:
This Saturday's Expo will meet 8:00pm at Milsons Point Train Station.
Don't forget; torches, and clothes that can get dirty as.
I had previously heard of this place, and again read and basically jerked off to, Siologens article ( http://siologen.livejournal.com/calendar) and photo's along with D'sankt's (http://www.sleepycity.net/) masterpieces.
I used to play around quite a bit with photography when I was younger but with a career that was in desperate need of fast-tracking I had procured the unusual talent of seeing only what could enhance my career ie if it wasn't about music, I didn't give a fuck. At all. Ive since either grown up a bit or I've become seriously jaded. Prolly both.
Being inspired by all the goodness I was seeing online I decided that both myself and my beautiful girlfriend Jess, who actually STUDIED photography would purchase a new digi camera, just something cheap that can be taken in putrid places like drains and bird shit infested derelict warehouses and didn't require the correct condition with the star of Jupiter's Belt and the moons of Saturn aligning as our SLR does. A diva camera indeed.
We got a good deal on a Canon S1 last season stock for half price ..... $400. Sweet.
Although only 3.2 mp it's fully manual mode (TV) is optimal for skanky places with little to no light available ie TIME EXPOSURE. Which btw an SLR will do no sweat, but be buggered if I'm gunna take rolls and rolls of pics to have zero turn out right. The LCD screen playback mode on a digi is priceless. I can check my fstop, exposure, iso in the blink of an eye, adjust it and see if my adjustment are correct. If they are then I can pretty much use that as a benchmark for the rest of the drain, within reason. Using only minor adjustments to a template means I can spend more time looking with my eyes, not THROUGH the viewfinder.
Anyways, the drain ....
Milsons Park was built sometime pre Depression era. I've heard a mix of reports dating the construction pre 1900 although I can't get Sydney Water to confirm it without scrolling through the archives at the research room SW have.
I lurve the Freedom of Info Act, even if they don't make it easy to gett said info, they must atleast make it available, somewhere somehow. One thing is definite, it replaced an old stream that is still evident for those watchin the floor.
The water coursing over the natural rockbed in places forming deep channels, the effect of eons of continuos flow.
You're prolly about to see something that looked that way when it was built, may 100's of years earlier.
Dropping into the concrete manhole situated in a quiet leafy park surrounded by orange unit blocks a small RCP awaits to greet every explorer. A quick double over and trudge mission down the RCP brings you to something I hadn't seen in other drains I've explored ... haha shouldn't that read: smoked bongs in?? Whatever. I was looking at a 12ft slide on a steep gradient that I'd hate to be in a rush to get up or down. By slide I mean a steep, smooth section of declining tunnel with churn blocks (lumps of cement) at the bottom to slow the flow of water that would have been escalated by the slide.
Not knowing where to go, but being a little too enthusiastic to show my mate Omen that doing fucked up things is good for the soul, I went down the slide and into the adjoining 4ft RCP that snakes it way down the hill like the Waterworks in Manly.
Unfortunately most ppl followed me. It wasn't until we heard the booming echo of " Actually guys, it's this way" that we realised that we being Newbies, and prolly very good examples of a genuine newby can't be made more apparent.
We trekked back up to the slide and this time went back up the slide to see a room at the top on the other side of a wall. This room lead to a small 3ft duck waddle style walk through a fucking wake up call. This was the shit.
I'm into seeing relics and this place has them in spades. First section is a sandstone loaf shape only small i height but large in distance, well when yr duck walking 20 feet seems too long. I guess it goes for around 100m before opening out again.
The shape changes and age are what makes this drain an experience that shouldn't be missed, if your into this sorta thing anyways.
The duration is a mixture of brick built, sandstone blocks, rough cut rock, and the occasional RCP (round concrete pipe) that stretches under the express way and snakes up the hill to central North Sydney.
Height ranges from 3ft to 7ft and is primarily an easy explore.
I went back a few weeks later and did the reverse traverse. Starting in Nth Syd this time and entering a gutter-box infront of yuppie-lunch-eating onlookers, I went down as far as the small Loaf section and came back up to Nth Syd passing the gutter box and this time continuing thru the smaller 4ft brick/concrete section I hadn't explored before.
The graff reads: CRAP FOR NEXT 200m THEN GETS GOOD AGAIN. After a good 5mins of hunchback madness the pain in my back was too much to bare.
Returning to the GBG in Little Spring St, I made the messy exit, due in part to the lack of step irons and again greeted the curious onlookers.
Milsons Point Drain is one of if not my fave drain in Sydney.
Fl@sh
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flashobscura/